Infiniband (IB) is an industry standard channel based architecture that features high speed, low latency interconnects for distributed computing infrastructure. Hosts with infiniband host adapter can be connected by infiniband switch. Infiniband to Ethernet gateway is typically used to connect infiniband network with traditional Ethernet network.
For high availability, two or more IB-to-Ethernet gateways can be used in redundant mode. The IB-to-Ethernet gateways can be in active/standby mode where only one gateway is actively handling data traffic. Alternatively, the IB-to-Ethernet gateways may be configured to work in active/active mode where data traffic is load balanced among the IB-to-Ethernet gateways.
Broadly, the IB-to-Ethernet gateways are configured as a layer 2bridge, and ARP (Address Translation Protocol) relay is used to bridge the infiniband and the Ethernet networks. Typically, target/destination IP address in ARP request is used to determine which IB-to-Ethernet gateway to handle the data traffic. Further, traffic between a pair of hosts or network devices such as client terminals may use different IB-to-Ethernet gateways depending upon which host initiated the data traffic.
Typically, the Ethernet side of the network includes a router as the default router for all IB hosts. IB hosts use the default router as the next hop to communicate with hosts in the other networks. If the IB host initiates the data traffic, the IB host will send ARP request using the router's IP address as the target IP address. As a result, all IB hosts will result in using the same IB-to-Ethernet gateway to communicate with hosts in the other networks (for example, the hosts on the Ethernet side).
In view of the foregoing, it would be desirable to have methods and systems for providing improved data traffic load balancing among redundant IB-to-Ethernet gateways.